Why are media treating Heather seriously?

I cannot believe how much broadcasting time has been granted to discussing the "story" of Heather Mills's various broadsides against the press. In the past 24 hours I have received a string of calls from several BBC outlets - Radio 4, Five Live, Radio 2, the World Service, News 24, the Asian Network - London's LBC Radio, an Italian channel, one US station. I'm sure there will be more today.

This is partly fuelled by media narcissism. Broadcasters like nothing better than discussing tabloid papers. But look at the print coverage too. Then there is the web. Google News is currently showing 575 articles on Mills's various claims - about death threats, her contemplation of suicide, being treated worse than a paedophile, paparazzi intrusion and the overall tabloid hell.

I have been asked to discuss, as a serious matter, her demand for a boycott of the tabloids and her attempt to tighten up the law. Which law? On intrusion, on libel? When I ask that question of researchers, I find they - like her - don't know what they're talking about. Here are a range of answers: you know, the privacy law... a law to correct inaccuracies... a law to get apologies published as big as the lies... a right of reply law... a law to stop harassment by photographers... a law to stop intrusion.

This is unutterable nonsense, of course. Ms Mills appears to know nothing about "the law" as it stands. She became more incoherent as she travelled around TV and radio studios yesterday on a crazed self-publicity tour. I tend to agree with this morning's Sunabout her fragile state of mind.

Yet I blame the producers and interviewers who gave her airtime to say what she liked without a shred of cross-questioning. There were no interruptions as she ranted and raved, making accusations that do not appear to be grounded in fact. Why was she not asked to give proof of her wilder claims?

Let's get all this in some perspective. Through her publicist - who has since resigned - she has attempted to spin the press. The fact that she was treated poorly by the media is no reflection on her publicist. It is partly the result of her own behaviour in the past, such as the revelations about her murky past which suggest that she has been economical with the truth, and her increasingly bizarre present behaviour.

It is also because she could not hope to win public sympathy while going to war with Paul McCartney. He was a Beatle, a beloved member of the world's most famous pop group. He is not a saint, but he has attained a special status granted to almost no other rock star. So she could not hope to win a toe-to-toe PR battle.

I agree that she has been badly treated by several newspapers. But she adopted entirely the wrong strategy by failing to use the self-regulatory machinery that could have provided her with some respite, a machinery created specifically to avoid the enactment of proposed privacy and right-of-reply laws at the end of the 1980s. In other words, the Press Complaints Commission.

When she first saw inaccuracies in the papers, why did she not make a formal complaint to the PCC? I understand that she made only one approach to the PCC, to deal with a single paparazzi scrum, and - through her lawyers - was offered the opportunity to meet the commission to discuss a long-term solution to the problem. The PCC heard no more after making the offer.

Instead, according to her publicist, Phil Hall, he contacted papers only to deny "the more extreme stuff." With the greatest of respect to Phil, I am baffled by this finger-in-the-dyke tactic. He was a News of the World editor and knows that calling editors or reporters has virtually no chance of bringing them to heel. It has not made an iota of difference to the coverage, which is laced with speculation dressed up as fact and, as so often, sourced to "friends".

Clearly, Phil realised just how counterproductive it would be for Mills to attack papers, understanding that any call for a boycott would certainly blow up in her face. This morning's reaction in the tabloids proves that: "Oh, come off it, Heather, how dare you compare your ordeal to Kate McCann's?" (Daily Mail) "Mucca on the edge" (The Sun) "Distressed Mills rants on TV show" (Daily Express) "Unhinged Mills" (Daily Mirror) and "Martyr Mucca has lost the plot" (Daily Star).

There has been some mildly sympathetic coverage in the States, such as this piece by Philip Stone, but American commentators would do well to take note of this excellent sentence by Amanda Platell: "Yesterday morning, on national television, we witnessed Heather Mills undergo a very public and very painful divorce... from reality."

That, I'm afraid, is the truth. If she had conducted herself with the same dignity as her estranged husband, largely ignoring the press - rather than trying to spin it behind the scenes - she would not be subject to such widespread contempt. It was noticeable from phone-in programmes today that people who are usually all too ready to dump on the tabloids did not agree with her. She has, as usual, misread the public mood.